


This fire isn't warm without you

by Dyongo



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Idiots in Love, M/M, Self-Reflection, missing partners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27850938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dyongo/pseuds/Dyongo
Summary: Kallus gets sent on a mission and gets delayed. Zeb is worried and doing his best to deal with it.
Relationships: Alexsandr Kallus/Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios
Comments: 6
Kudos: 51





	This fire isn't warm without you

Zeb sat hunched over on a makeshift log bench in front of a raging fire pit, elbows resting on his knees and staring blankly at it. It was warm, but it really had nothing on Alex. Alex…his Alex…who had been missing _for months_ when the supposedly simple reconnaissance mission he and his intel team had gone on went sideways.

He huffed out a bitter laugh, thinking of his younger, more foolish self and how he'd only seen Alexsandr Kallus as a murdering Imperial agent and how he had absolutely hated him. And now he was so in love with that stubborn idiot of a man he was fairly sure he was losing his mind. Nothing about it made sense, but kriff him if it was anything less than right.

Zeb sighed as the last interaction with he had with the man rolled through his mind. "I'll be back before you know it, now let me down….Please?." Alex had said to him then, wrapped up in a tight embrace, held up from the ground by Zeb, whose reply was muffled as he pressed his face into Alex's chest, breathing in his smell. Zeb could feel Alex running his fingers over his ears gently before tightening and tugging his head back, forcing him to look up.

"Quit pouting. It's only recon, hardly that dangerous." He smiled down, before massaging the back of Zeb's ears, causing the Lasat to rumble deep in his chest and his eyes to flutter shut.

"You ain't going anywhere if you keep that up." Zeb answered with a content sigh, tightening his hold.

Alex gave a light chuckle. "You know I have to go. It's only a few rotations. Now let me down or I'm going to be late." Hindsight told him he never should have let Alex's feet touch the ground, but he had let him go anyway.

__________

"Yeah… you're late alright..." He muttered with lazy blink before bringing his hands up to scrub over his face, scratching at the hair on the sides of his jaw and down through his beard. He really, really missed how dexterous Alex's fingers were and the feeling of them tangling through the longer strands. "Few rotations my ass." Zeb kept grumbling to himself before looking for something to really sink his claws in to. His eyes caught a bit of already chopped wood on the outside of the pit and reached over with his foot to grab it. Once it was in his hands, he found the bark was tough, but peeled away with little efforrt. The wood itself was soft, smooth, and easy to carve with his claws, but dense enough that he would have to work on it…not unlike Alex, really.

Zeb snorted at the comparison as he pressed under a section of bark to pry it away. Alex was strong and capable of taking care of himself. He was a warrior. But even Warriors could fall. He knew that from experience. He was a warrior once…and he had failed. The chunk of wood in his hands splintered in in half from how hard he was gripping it, and he set down one of the pieces to take a deep breath, keeping the other half clutched tightly. Alex was coming back. He was going to survive and tell Zeb all about it.

He was going to come back to the Rebellion…back to him.

Zeb turned the wood over and over in his palm, scratching away the rougher bits of it as he did. The brief though of a 'If he comes back' crossed his mind for a split second before being immediately squashed. His claws sank into the wood and started to pull the fibers.

"You're gonna come back…" Zeb said, drawing lines in his block. "You're gonna survive." He muttered as he dug deeper in to the pale wood. "And when all of this is over…I hope you'll come with me." he whispered as he trailed the last groove in the chunk of wood. For a second, he thought of tossing his little totem into the fire as an offering for his prayers, but his fist only tightened around it. With a tired sigh, he picked up the other half of the split wood and tucked it away.

"He'll come home."


End file.
